Virtual Buzz Assistant

Internet Marketing Assistants are in hot demand.  The problem is, everyone thinks of themselves as an Internet Marketing Assistant even though they are not offering anything that is special or highly skilled.  Read this post about hiring internet marketing assistants from oDesk.

John Cow is a good group of Internet Marketing Experts and they are desparate for some quality help.  The problem is, finding quality help amoung the multitude of people claiming to be internet marketing assistants is difficult.

The fact is, once you get really good, you make more money doing the marketing for yourself.  So to find a good internet marketing assistant, you need to find someone that is experienced, but not so good that they do not need the work.

Another solution is to hire different assistants for different tasks.  For example, instead of hirning an internet marketing assistant, you may want to hire several people and each specializes in one task.

• Blog Writing
• Online Advocacy
• Online Contest Manager
• Editing
• Social Bookmarking
• Newsletter Management
• Help Desk

These are just some of the ideas.  If you hire individuals to run one area well, then it is easier to assess their skills and less likely they will become good at overall internet marketing and start doing things for themselves.

Internet Fraud is common, and virtual assistants must be careful not to get caught up in the fraud.  I have personally seen several new attempts to set up ¨non-profits¨ where the people were asking virtual assistants to create buzz and donations for their new effort.

A virtual assistant is an easy target because these fraudulant psudo-organizations do not want to hire real employees and a virtual assistant can propogate the fraud without being aware of what they are doing.  They never see the office, never meet the owners in person, etc.

So what can you do to protect yourself from aiding a fraudulant business or non-profit?

• Always get at least partial payment in advance.  Without exception.
• Always have the client sign a contract and be sure your contract specifically mentions that the company cannot be engaging in illegal or deceptive activities.
• Check the better business bureau if you have doubts about a client
• Get references from suppliers concerning the client.
• Don´t give your client a social security number.  A Federal Business number is all they need if you are a registered business.
• Do not give your bank number for direct deposit.
• Immediately stop services if the client falls behind in payments.
• Use a collections agency when the client does not appear willing to pay their bill.
• Stick to ethical buzz marketing tactics.
• Do not believe things that seem too good to be true.  Do not work with the expectation that there will be a lot of money coming in the future.  If you want to do that, start your own business.
• Never cosign on loans or help in raising money that involves your credit or reputation.

I am sure I am leaving some things out.  The reality is, there are a lot of people that believe their own hype and will try to get you to buy it.  Virtual Assistants need to take every precausion to avoid aiding internet fraud and getting involved with clients that are not good for them and ultimately will result in lost income and opportunities.  It is easy to get excited about a new client, especially if they are promising big things, but have a system in place to check the validity of the client, get payment in advance and detect internet fraud if it is happening.

Remember, catching it up front will prevent a lot of headaches in the future.

Virtual Assistant Jobs are everywhere.  But that does not mean they are easy to get.  To land great virtual assistant jobs you have to be able to think like the business owner that is hiring you as a virtual assitant.  Here are the kinds of things you need to consider to improve your chances of getting a va job.

1. Specialize in something that has high demand.  For example, here at the virtual buzz assistant network we specialize in Internet Marketing because of the high demand.  No business owner wants to hear that you will do a laundry list of things because they know you cannot be good at all those things.
2. Own an industry or two.  It is actually easier to get virtual assistant jobs if you know one or two industries extremely well.  For example, you could specialize in helping authors promote their books.  Not only will authors want to hire you as their internet marketing virtual assistant because you are a specialist, but it will also be easier for you to hone your pitch and focus on a specific group of people.
3. Package your services – You will get more virtual assistant jobs if you package your services in a way that is easy for people to understand.  For example, you may have a $500 per month internet promotions package that involves blog writing and website promotion.
4. Use testimonials – If you really want to get more virtual assistant jobs, be ready with testimonials and contact information of your past clients.  Send these things to prospective clients along with proposals and use them on your website if appropriate.
5. Blog – Blogging is a great way to show off your competency.  Use your blog to demonstrate your virtual assistant skills.
6. Learn how to upsell.  There is a good chance someone is going to start out with a small project with you and then decide if they want to do more with you after the trial period.  Practice selling the trial package and get good at upselling after you have demonstrated your virtual assistant value.
7. Ask for referrals – if you have happy clients, there is a good chance they will be able to help you land more virtual assistant jobs if you simply ask for a referral.

These tips will help you find virtual assistant jobs that pay better and can lead to long term virtual assistant work in the future.

Related articles

• Internet Marketing Virtual Assistants
• Virtual Assistant Salary
• Virtual Assistant Skills
• Hire a Virtual Assistant

For many people, work at home opportunities might have been a dream before but now they may be the only choice.

I have a lot of friends that own businesses, and here is a sure sign of the bad economic times.  One still runs his two businesses on the side but now works full time at Home Depot.  Another just sent me an email today that he is looking for a job.  This guy regularly brought in BIG IT sales all the time.

There are some great opportunities to work at home.  And if you are on unemployment, working from your home while you at least have that particial check coming in is better than starting with nothing.

But how do you get your work at home opportunity to start generating cash for you quickly?

First, if you need cash quickly from your work at home business, then do not spend too much time planning, writing business plans and building your website.  The only thing that usually generates money is selling.  Within a day or two, be out selling and start building a cash flow.

Here are some other tips for fast cash work at home opportunities.

• Be ready to sell.  Have contracts ready to sign and know exactly what you are pitching.
• Try to get at least partial payment in advance.  The poor economy can be a great reason to require it.
• Look for areas of pain.  For example, the virtual buzz assistant network focuses on the large number of tasks that businesses need to do to be successful online.  If business owners spend their time doing those things, then they will not be getting their other work done.
• Point out how you save money.  If you are a consultant of any kind, the costs to hire you should be lower than the costs of an employee when you factor in training, equipment, health care, productivity, turn over and other HR related items.
• Don’t get one big client.  Be very careful putting all your effort into one client.  It is great, but when that client is cancels the contract you will essentially be starting over again.

There are a lot of work at home scams out there.  Think for yourself on how hard it will be to sell the product or service.  Don’t listen to the companies estimates, make your own.  If you have realistic expectations and start selling quickly, you can be much more successful with your work at home opportunity.

A Virtual Assistant Blog Writer is one of the best things your business can do with a virtual assistant.

However, blog writing skills are as diverse as hiring someone that is in construction.

Do you need a handyman to repair your railing?  Or do you need a crew to build your garage?

Your blog writing is just as diverse.  Before you start shopping for a Virtual Assistant Blog Writer, begin by understanding what your goals are.  Here are some possible goals for a business blog.

1. Provide news and industry information – people come back frequently to the blog.
2. Get great search engine traffic for your keywords and generate leads.
3. Lock down additional slots in search engines to control your brand identity better.
4. Create buzz and linking to the blog with great link bait articles.

All four of these are good goals, and they can all happen to some extent, but it is a lot of work to do these things well.  For example, if you want good keyword written blog posts, you need to do research, measure the results you get and maybe do minor rewrites over time to improve performance.

Writing a good link bait article could take days of research and writing.  You would not expect a cheap blog writer to be able to produce that kind of article.

Know your Blog Writing Goals

To get the most out of hiring a virtual assistant that is a blog copywriter, you need to understand what the goals are and craft your interview questions accordingly.  Here are some sample questions.

1. What tools do you use to do keyword research before writing a blog post?
2. What is your strategy for writing headlines?
3. Show me some examples of link bait you have written.  (You can then measure the number of links to that page to see how successful it is)
4. Send me a link to a post you wrote that had target keywords and tell me what those keywords are.
5. How do you handle writers block?
6. How do you work?  If I want 10 blog posts per month, how would you produce them?

These blog writer interview questions are going to eliminate 90% or more of the applicants (unless they are trying to BS you) because most blog writers are not writing with a clear strategy and do not know how to do many of these things effectively.  They see blog writing as just writing a few paragraphs to keep the blog current.  That is fine if you are not expecting much out of the blog, but you can get better results with a blog writing strategy and serious writing with a trained professional.

Once you hire a good virtual assistant blog writer, be sure to pay them well and treat them very well.  While there are lots of virtual assistants available, getting one that is a good blog copywriter that can produce great results is very special.

Many people dream of being a Virtual Assistant and working from home.  It is a great job, if you do not mind wearing the many hats of an entrepreneur.  But to make money as a virtual assistant, you need to think of yourself as more than a virtual assistant.

The problem I have always had with the term virtual assistant is that it is so vague.  Business owners often cannot grasp how to use a virtual assistant.  The virtual assistants do not help when they tell them they will do a bunch of things.  That just seems like they will try to do anything but are probably not good at anything.

To make real money as a virtual assistant, you need to focus on developing special, high value skills and selling yourself as a virtual specialist.  That is why we started the Virtual Buzz Network.  Our virtual assistants hone their virtual internet marketing skills and offer a variety of high value services that are very specific, have measurable goals and save the business owner time.

Here is a list of the more common virtual marketing assistant skills.

1. Blog writing
2. Copy Writing
3. Article Publishing
4. Online Advocacy and PR
5. Community Management
6. Adwords Management
7. eNewsletter Writing and Publishing
8. Social Bookmarketing

Now you may think this is a small list of skills, but consider this as a sample project for a company.

1. Your company wants to create leads for small business owners of your industry.
2. You build a ning community and customize it with a virtual assistant.
3. You set up a blog and do keyword research – you begin writing daily to attract your target audience.
4. On the blog, you offer the visitors free access to your private community when they sign up for your newsletter.
5. Traffic is now coming to your blog from search engines, social media, twitter and adwords.  You are getting 5-10 new people signing up per day.
6. You use the email and the community to educate people on the advantages of your product, and also give away all kinds of free content.
7. 1% of people buy from you eventually.  Approximately one new customer every 10 days.  As all your efforts keep growing, word of mouth and search engines increase the rate of subscribers.  The second year it is a new customer every 5 days.  As long as you keep working on it, you continue to get better and better results.

This is just a ficticious example, but accurately demonstrates a solid strategy.  You’d have some expense in blog hosting and email marketing tools, but it is minor.  Your virtual assistant would do everything above to ensure that you would keep selling in your normal channels and not have to spend excessive time on the internet marketing side.

Now doesn’t that make a lot of sense?

Here is a free internet marketing plan intro that will help you craft your complete internet marketing strategy.  Let me be absolutely transparent.  I want you to craft a great internet marketing plan using all kinds of free and cheap internet marketing tools and techniques.  Then I want you to realize that it is very valuable to do it, but it is a lot of work, so you will submit your project to our Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant Network.

Internet Marketing Plan – Step One

The first thing you need to do is focus on the outcome you want from your internet marketing plan.  I do not mean vague things like more sales.  You have to think about your selling process and understand what internet marketing can do for you.

1. Can internet marketing create sales directly?  Is it likely people will buy from you online?  It depends on the product.
2. Can internet marketing generate leads for you?  Will people pick up the phone and call you?  Will they submit via a form?
3. Will your internet marketing effort generate stronger brand awareness?  Will it strengthen your ability to close sales when you are calling on people in person?
4. Can internet marketing be part of a drip marketing strategy where you help people get to know you and eventually call you?  Email auto responders are a good example of this.

That list is not a pick-one list.  Ideally you will have some things to sell, some ways to generate leads and some techniques for strengthening relationships.  But you have to be clear on the outcome before you can start.

Internet Marketing Plan – Step 2

Next you need to plan out your internet marketing strategy.  Think of the entire thing as a funnel.  And if you have three outcomes you want, then you have to build three funnels.  Some of the things high up in your funnel will probably give people options to drop down into different funnels depending on their interests.

You know where you want to get people, but how do you find them?  There are several different ways people will find you and begin exploring what you have to offer.

1. Press Releases
2. Search Engines
3. Word of Mouth
4. Affiliates
5. Paid Ads
6. Social Media
7. Online Advocacy

Before you invest huge money into ads, make sure you test the conversion and profitability of the page people are landing on.

Keep in mind that you will not get instant results from many of the online options.  Because the internet is so crowded and noisy, it is hard to stand out and get noticed.  It can take months or even years to build a credible site that has a real audience.

So for this step two, you should have your Internet Marketing Outcome defined and have your funnel strategies listed on how you are going to build traffic and awareness for the marketing outcome you want.

Example:  I want people that are thinking about becoming a Virtual Buzz Assistant to visit this site and join our network so that I can help them be better virtual marketing assistants and help businesses find virtual assistants that they can depend on to help them promote their business.

• I have the sign up page which is the end of the funnel.
• I have the site and blog, which is the middle of the funnel.
• I write articles to generate search engine traffic, such as this one about free internet marketing plans
• I use a variety of social media sites to create higher visibility for the site.

Without going into too much detail, you can see how this internet marketing funnel is built and works.

Internet Marketing Plan – Step 3

Now you have a plan in place.  The next step is doing it.  Marketing is never a set it up and forget it proposition.  You will have to try things, experiment, track your marketing results and ROI and keep making adjustments.  Also, even if you get great visibility one day, it is not easy to maintain that visibility for the long haul without considerable effort.

That is why we created the Virtual Buzz Assistant network.  If you create a good, detailed markting plan there are many people available that can help you execute it.  But do not think that because you have outsourced particular internet marketing tasks that you can forget about your internet marketing effort.  It is up to the owner or CMO to keep an eye on the reports and results to ensure great ROI.  And if the numbers are not where you want them, then experiment and adjust, don’t just stop doing it.

I have seen a lot of people give up. Blogging is an excellent example.  People get excited about blogs, they start a blog, then when they do not get a big audience or sales quickly, then simply stop blogging.  It is not a question of whether blogs work as part of your internet marketing strategy or not.  The question is, are you doing the right things with your blog.

Internet Marketing Plan – Step 4

At some point you reach a time where you have to assess your effort and make some decisions.  If something is working, you need to put more time and money into increasing that effort.  If something is not working, you have to ask yourself why and decide if the effort needs changed or is it simply not reaching the right people.  You do not want to give up on things too quickly, but you also do not want to keep throwing more money at failing strategies.  Move your resources to what works.

I hope this free internet marketing plan article is valuable to you.  People always make requests on this site to get more buzz, but they have not done their homework and written at least a simple internet marketing plan.  If you cannot clearly define the marketing tasks you want a virtual assistant to do, then you cannot expect them to get results for you.

Don’t have time to write your Internet Marketing Plan?  Then you can always pay someone to write your internet marketing plan for you.